Karl Hughes
Chief Executive Officer at Draft.dev
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolKarl Hughes is a former startup CTO turned founder and CEO who has spent 11 years building engineering teams and turning developer-focused content into predictable revenue. He launched Draft.dev in 2020 and scaled it to $2.5M ARR within two years, and in 2023 acquired The Podcast Consultant to expand into audio/video production for enterprise clients. Hands-on across the stack, Karl contributes to open-source projects improving frontend UX and PostgreSQL JSON/JSONB support, reflecting a blend of product-driven engineering and database expertise. Based in Chicago, he runs a portfolio of niche marketing service businesses and writes about leadership, technology, and growth—often translating technical content into commercial outcomes. An engineer by training, he pairs practical coding chops with an operator’s focus on repeatable growth systems.
11 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelors, Mechanical Engineering, Bachelors, Mechanical Engineering at University of Tennessee, Knoxville
English, php, javascript, html/css
Stackoverflow
300reputation
26kreached
9answers
4questions
Github Skills (35)
sqlite10
postgresql10
api-automation10
css10
databases10
php10
github-pages10
sql10
jekyll10
html10
rest-api10
salesforce-rest-api10
crud10
database10
api-design9
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
draftdev/startup-marketing-checklist
Jul 2017 - Nov 2021
A checklist of tactics for marketing your startup.
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:1 review, 187 commits, 35 PRs in 4 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Karl primarily focused on enhancing the frontend and overall user experience of the startup marketing checklist project. Their commits added a static site using Jekyll and integrated gh-pages for deployment. They implemented new features, including email signup forms and a voting system, and updated the checklist's presentation. Furthermore, the user refactored the site structure and appearance by adding custom layouts, and incorporating the GitHub buttons into the front-end design.
checklistautomationmarketingtactics
mevdschee/php-crud-api
Feb 2017 - Apr 2017
Single file PHP script that adds a REST API to a SQL database
Role in this project:Back-end Developer / Database Engineer
Back-end Developer / Database EngineerContributions:15 commits, 7 PRs, 30 comments in 1 month
Contributions summary:Karl primarily contributed to database-related aspects of the PHP REST API, specifically focusing on expanding PostgreSQL support by allowing JSON and JSONB data types. They also updated test fixtures for both PostgreSQL and SQLite databases, ensuring the tests accurately reflect the database schema and data. Further contributions involved refactoring test files, organizing and making tests configurable for different database systems, suggesting a focus on database compatibility and test suite maintainability.
sqlservercrudpostgisphpmyadminopenapi
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